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© 2021 Alexandria Londres All Rights Reserved "LOOKING at NOTHING IS SEEING YOURSELF": SPECULATIVE PODCASTS and FANS IMAGINING QUEER RADICAL FUTURES

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© 2021 Alexandria Londres All Rights Reserved © 2021 Alexandria Londres All Rights Reserved "LOOKING AT NOTHING IS SEEING YOURSELF": SPECULATIVE PODCASTS AND FANS IMAGINING QUEER RADICAL FUTURES By ALEXANDRIA LONDRES A thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Master of Arts Graduate Program in Women's & Gender Studies Written under the direction of Brittney Cooper And approved by _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ _____________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2021 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS "LOOKING AT NOTHING IS SEEING YOURSELF": SPECULATIVE PODCASTS AND FANS IMAGINING QUEER RADICAL FUTURES by ALEXANDRIA LONDRES Thesis Director: Brittney Cooper This project analyzes three speculative podcasts and their fan’s transformative works to demonstrate the ways in which together they imagine radical and queer futures. Spec-fic can be seen as a way to take back a future that is traditionally imagined without certain voices and bodies. Because podcasts are a solely audio medium without visual representations at all, bodies in this arrangement are brought in via fanworks. I use close reading to look at The Penumbra Podcast, 2016-; The Magnus Archives, 2016-; and The Bright Sessions, 2015-2018. This thesis asserts that speculative podcasts and their fans’ works build off of each other to envision the future, while also being complicated by contemporary discourse and understandings of race. Utilizing queer theory and fan studies, I argue that queer podcast creators create space within their audio medium for fans to continue to grow upon their stories. Fans then do so by bringing in (raced) bodies and visuals via fanworks. In this understanding, fanworks and fans themselves have changed understandings of the original media to create a collaborative version of the future. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Brittney Cooper for her consistent and brilliant help through this process. I would also like to thank my committee members Dr. Kyla Schuller, and Dr. Julie Rajan for their insightful input and assistance. I want to acknowledge the creators of these series, Alexander Newall, Lauren Shippen, Jonny Sims, Sophie Takagi Kaner, and Kevin Vibert for their work. I also want to acknowledge every fan and fanwork creator I referenced. I would also like to thank Caitlin, Loren, and Raine for all their help and support. Lastly, I would like to thank my mother for introducing me to fandom, and those at the Organization for Transformative Works for protecting it. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract … ii Acknowledgement/ Dedication … iii Introduction … 1 Chapter 1- The Penumbra Podcast … 40 Chapter 2- The Magnus Archives … 66 Chapter 3- The Bright Sessions … 86 Conclusions (The Future) … 105 Bibliography … 115 iv 1 Introduction This project will examine speculative fiction podcasts as well as their fans' speculative works to see how these products imagine radical and queer futures. Speculative fiction can be seen as a way to take back a future that is hegemonically imagined without certain voices and bodies. With an accessible audio-only medium, spec-fic podcasts have a unique position to access fans and listeners, as well as having a particular relationship to bodies. This project aims to examine the series' speculation, fans moving through and beyond those futures, and finally, look at the amalgamated future that was forged by the podcasts and their fanworks. This project seeks to assist in the creation and imagination of radical futures, through resisting the hegemonic ideal even within scholarship that the typical fan or 'market audience' is a cisgender heterosexual white middle-aged man, and by locating power and excavating it through finding the body within the audio. The three podcasts this project will address are The Penumbra Podcast’s Juno Steel storyline (2016-), The Magnus Archives (2016-), and The Bright Sessions (2015- 2018). All the shows have LGBTQA+ characters and queer relationships in the foreground. In addition to this, all could be seen as speculative fiction, or spec-fic. Because the creators care about making radical and queer futures, are more accessible to fans, and seem to care more about them as constituents as opposed to big media conglomerates, their interactions with fans are shaped differently than larger creators. Beyond their direct feeds on social media and Patreon, the creators also engage with fans in other ways. Kevin Vibert, lead writer for The Penumbra 2 Podcast¸ has been streaming videogames on Twitch during the covid-19 pandemic; The Magnus Archives creators Rusty Quill runs a fan Discord server for Patreon supporters. As the fanbase grew in size the creators stepped back from interacting as much. Despite this, it is clear that for these smaller independent speculative podcasts, communicating with the fans is part of their relationship. The connectivity that Patreon, as well as other online sources, lends to creators and fans, combined with a sense of safety and representation coming from the inclusion of queer and trans characters means that the fanworks and fan behaviors and cultures differ largely from larger fandoms of other source media. In addition to looking at speculative podcasts and their fanworks, this project aims to look at how the latter changes the former. The product of speculative work done by an independent podcast + queer and trans BIPOC fans is more than the fanworks and the original works themselves. Regarding speculative podcasts and their queer and minority fans, the combination of fanworks + works should be taken together as a whole project to work toward radical queer futures via speculation. When fans and creators have a relationship like these small podcasts' fandoms do, the product is more than the sum of its parts. One way that podcasts and their fandoms are exceptional in this regard, though, is the relative accessibility to create and consume podcasts. All of these podcasts are free to listen to, accessible to anyone on the internet due to transcripts, and are produced by small independent creators who at least partially are funded by fans. Websites like Patreon, which allow fans of creators to donate monthly or based on content updates, have changed the nature of fan-creator engagements, as well as making it possible for minority 3 creators to produce work. Patreon allows creators to avoid larger production companies and others who may interfere with their content, including potential censorship of queer and radical themes. Because queer radical podcasts are funded by their fans at least partly, the relationship is unique and fandoms may weigh heavier in decision making, where traditional media has media corporations. This is not to say that fans have direct input or control over these podcasts, but the small, close-knit nature of this relationship may mean that creators are more likely to be influenced by their fans than larger companies and creators with less access to fans. Social media like Twitter and Instagram where creators and fans have direct connections have certainly changed fandom overall. However, these small-scale productions from indie podcast creators and their queer fans are closer than that. For this reason, fan behaviors, culture, and fanworks can be seen as affecting the overall cumulative project that is the speculating of the future through podcasts. Part of this is the podcast's plots and characters, actors and creators, fans themselves, fanworks depicting bodies and identities, the relationships between creators and fans, the community of fans, and what a potential listener and fan might see when searching for the show. Moreover, the reciprocal relationship means we can read the futures created in works + fanworks as a cumulative, if not collaborative, project. We can understand fanworks and original works as a cycle in which these small productions are influenced by their fans, and fans influence each other, therefore changing the entire product that new (potential) fans might see. There is very little scholarship on podcasts, particularly fiction podcasts/audio dramas. There are some burgeoning discussions within the past 4 year surrounding podcast fandoms and conversations and race, sexuality, and representation. Despite the growing fanbases and general popularity of podcasts over the past two decades there is little written about them. Besides, the majority of podcasts mentioned are not audio dramas. Podcasting is generally written about as a media tool, referring predominantly to news, nonfiction talk radio, or humor. The specific location of fiction podcast audio dramas is flattened under general ideas of ‘radio/audio drama’ or podcasting as non-fiction. Some are mentioned in Spinelli and Dann’s Podcasting from 2019, but what the authors call 'podcast dramas' are linked intrinsically to the history of radio plays. Something is missing in their discussion: they assert that despite "freedom" in the space of the internet that "independent podcast drama producers create works that appeal to the core podcast listening demographic. 'middle-American Millennials', male and under fifty, and 'geeky'" (Spinelli and Dann 109). This, to me, seems incongruous with the politics implicit and explicit in these speculative podcasts, as well as what can be learned about the fanbases of these shows. While ostensibly anyone can listen to podcasts due to their accessibility, there is a phenomenon of queer and minority fans gathering around these speculative podcasts. Regarding an international, diverse swatch of thousands of fans as geeky men is flattening the work done by, around, and through fiction podcasts. 5 Methods A way to see the queer future-creation of these podcasts is through close readings of passages. Due to the audio medium, there are transcripts available on the website of all these series1, which I use to cite and quote. These transcripts do obscure some of the audio-specific traits of the show, like tone of voice, but there are also certainly fans who use them as accessibility tools for engaging with the fandom when they cannot listen to the shows themselves.
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